The St Mary’s Church and Micheldever Variety Group are performing R C Sherriff’s play, Journey’s End, on 22nd – 25th October, 2014. Performance starts at 8pm in St Mary’s Church, Micheldever, SO21 3DB. Tickets are available from the Micheldever Store or the ticket line on 07873 181228 and are priced at £10.00 per person and […]
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Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
Tags : Anthem for Doomed Youth, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen
This sonnet was completed on, or just before, 25th September 1917 and the final draft, of which there were many, bears several amendments by Siegfried Sassoon, whom Owen had met while both men were at Craiglockhart Military Hospital during that summer. However, Anthem for Doomed Youth, in a different form, was first imagined by Owen […]
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Eleanor Farjeon was born in London on 13th February 1881, the third child of writer Benjamin Farjeon and his wife Margaret (Maggie) Jefferson, who was the daughter of the American actor Joseph Jefferson. Just a few months after Eleanor’s birth, in the summer of 1881, her older brother Charles died, aged just one. Eleanor, known […]
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Vera Brittain
Tags : Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was born on December 29th 1893 at Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire. She was the oldest child of paper manufacturer Arthur Brittain and his wife Edith (née Bervon), who moved their young family to Macclesfield in Cheshire when Vera was eighteen months old, just a few months before her beloved brother Edward was born. […]
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1916 Seen From 1921 by Edmund Blunden
Tags : 1916 seen from 1921, analysis, Edmund Blunden, poetry, wr poetry
A poem full of raw emotion and a tremendous sense of loss and sadness. The reader becomes acutely aware that Blunden is biding his time, waiting for his life to return to him, so that he can once again be at peace in his beloved countryside, but one also realises that he never really achieved […]
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The poem given below, quite simply, questions how those who survived the conflict could ever hope to regain a normal life, following the war, in the face of such overwhelming sacrifice. This sad piece reflects Gibson’s unhappiness at his non-combatant status. Written before he was finally accepted by the army, Lament demonstrates a feeling of guilt that […]
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This poem was written in March 1919, shortly after the poet was demobilised. By this stage, Sassoon had come to despise the war, but retained, throughout his life a great affection for the men with whom he had served, which is reflected in this piece. A very personal poem, Aftermath used to be broadcast on […]
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The poem given below is of unknown date which was first published in 1919. This piece may be about the assumed death of Gurney’s friend F. W. Harvey (who it later transpired was not dead, but a prisoner of war), or it may be about another friend, or about death in general. A poem of […]
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We’re very grateful to Deb Fisher, Secretary of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship for allowing us to publish this article here, which we know you will all enjoy. There will be many people reading this article who know a lot more than I do about aeroplanes and, indeed, about the First World War. All I […]
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